


Tumor

by BlueMoonHound



Series: John stories [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self Harm, mostly hurt but, no one dies, post sburb au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7569907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoonHound/pseuds/BlueMoonHound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a feeling, really. It bugs you. <br/>You're so selfish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tumor

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually the first fic I wrote for this series, I wrote it a month or two ago, I wanted to edit it a little before posting it because it's so meloncholy n stuff.  
>  enjoy XDD

Jade smiles at you as she walks through the kitchen. You smile back, fully aware that it's a little forced.

It's not that you're not happy, you suppose. It's just that you've been thinking lately. All of your friends –

No. you're not going down that road.

Jade and Rose seem ok. Jade still half misses Bec you think, but she's also become half Bec herself? So you don't know if you're actually reading that right. She seems a lot happier surrounded by people than she did alone on the island before the game, or even on the ship with you. You suppose you can be a nuisance and you don't blame her at all. Rose is back to writing wizard fanfic, hanging out with Jane and discussing power shit. She seems to talk to Dirk a lot but you haven't seen her in months and all your information about her life right now is secondhand, through Jade. You don't blame her, either. You really are annoying. You put your face in your hands. Dammit.

Dirk and Jake made up, despite their past, and they're much happier now. Roxy and Jane hang out a lot, but Roxy also seems to like the company of carapacians a lot more than that of humans. Probably because she grew up with them. They're a lot nicer than humans sometimes. A lot less sociable, though.

Dave… He said he wanted some time alone. You miss Dave. He probably hates you but he was closest to you before the game and god do you miss him. He'd been happy to see you on the platform, you think, but he hadn't reappeared since then. Maybe he was online. You don't go online. Online is a safe place for your other friends to hang out and you don't want to ruin that. Or maybe you just don't want to remember the game. You're not sure.

You're not entirely sure why Jade is living with you anyway. She just said she would. Now she is.

You take your face out of your hands and slump sideways across the couch, taking up the whole length. It's not the right ceiling, though. You get up and walk up to your room. You feel tired. You've been doing this for so long. This postgame, whatever it is.

It has been 4 months since you opened that goddamn door and you still don't feel like any of it is behind you. It's all seared violently into your memory like a tumor (ha. ha.) and it's never coming out. Like a tumor. Maybe it'll start to grow.

You _do_ have a bit of a headache at the moment.

You feel so hot and heavy, tired like you're going to sink through the floor. You pull off your shirt and collapse on your bed in your boxers. You hit your ankle against the headboard by accident and wince, one of your boxer legs riding up. You don't even bother to pull them down anymore. You used to be self conscious about the scars on your thighs, but you don't even care. If Jade sees them, she'll ask, you know. But she never even comes near you unless she has to.

You think you understand Dave's obsession with avoiding his game powers now. Wind bothers you. Feeling it. Seeing things moving around on their own. It sends a shiver down your spine. You used that shit to kill people. You started closing all the windows at night, and you can't sleep when it's stormy outside. You wonder if Jade or Rose or the alpha kids have those problems. Maybe the girls are just stronger.

You were happy before the game.

No, that's not true either. You were happi _er_ before the game. Before the game, you felt sort of empty. You never expected much to get better, but you didn't expect it to get worse either. You were okay with things. There was just… a void.

You didn't start cutting until you were stuck on that goddamn spaceship. It was nothing against Jade. You had fun when you were with Jade. But you had started to realize that you were kind of self centered. For a few months, it had just sort of bugged you, making you uncomfortable in the back of your mind. But after a while it had devolved into full on hate. You hated that you were like that. You hated that you had acted that way with your friends. What gave you the right to be self centered? Nothing.

The cutting had been punishment.

You don't bother anymore. You aren't a _kid_ anymore. You don't do dumb shit.

You stop thinking at the ceiling and drift to sleep.

 

“John I made coffee!” Jade calls from downstairs.

You don't want to get up. You can feel the air. It's suffocating you. You're surrounded by fucking air. How does Dave handle it? Knowing the time? Being surrounded by it like this? Does he suffocate too? You curl in on yourself and push the air away.

 

You wake up later, and Jade is sitting on your bed.

You sit up. Jade is taller than you, and her hair takes up a lot of space all on its own. Not to mention her shoulders. Pure muscle. She could pick up your entire group and just carry them away.

Well maybe not Jake. Jade and Jake are the same size and height, with about the same build. So everyone but Jake, and Jake without everyone else. Why are you even thinking about your sister's muscles. You sigh.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jade puts her hands on her ankles. Her ears are facing forward, so she must not be annoyed.

“Talk about what?”

“Whatever's bothering you.”

“Nothing's bothering me.”  
She looks a little annoyed now. “I know that's not true.”

“I don't want to talk about it.” So far you've looked anywhere but her face.

“Okay.” she says, getting up and leaving the room. You hear the door shut behind her.

 

That afternoon a storm rolls through and your head hurts more. You just want it to go away. You're shaking a little. Lightning flashes behind the window and you flinch. _Remember when you used to teleport?_ Says a little voice in your brain. _Not the wind powers, mind. The other ones. The juju ones._

You want to cry.

 

You listen to Black Parade through your headphones, staring at the ceiling again.

It reminds you of your dad. He's still here. He's also dead. You have mixed feelings about that. He's not the same guy. But Jane is happy you suppose, and that's more important.

You spend way too much of your life thinking about yourself. You're not important.

It's almost eight o'clock. That's when Jade wakes up. Maybe you could make _her_ coffee for once. You pause the song halfway through and throw your phone on your end table, pulling a shirt over your head. You pause for a moment and then decide to put on jeans, too. You haven't left your room in nearly a week and you're probably not very pleasant to look at anyway, so you might as well be covered.

You put on a sweater before you head downstairs.

You kind of understand how the coffee machine works. You spend the next 10 minutes trying to figure it out anyway. Because you're slow. You eventually have everything together and press brew. Fuck you're so bad at this. Why did you decide to do this? Jade would probably be happier with her own coffee.

You sink into a chair and watch the coffee machine drip out little brown drops of coffee through the filter. You knew how to make coffee, it had just been years. Too many years.

Three and a half years, actually. Whatever.

You pour yourself a cup of coffee when it finishes brewing and take a sip.

“John?”

You start in surprise and nearly drop your mug on the floor, succeeding in getting scalding hot coffee all over your hands. “Fuck,” you say, putting the mug down on the table with now shaking hands.

“Oh I'm sorry, are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” You wipe your hands off on your jeans with a wince, not even trying to be careful. It hurts like fuck but you don't care.

“John you just spilled boiling liquid on yourself!”

“We're gods, Jade.” You're not trying to sound this tired. “It's not like it's going to actually hurt me.”

“But doesn't it hurt right now?”

You shrug and pick up your coffee mug. It does hurt. But you've had worse.

You drink half the coffee in one gulp and put the cup back down. “Anyway I made coffee.”

Jade doesn't comment. She just gets herself a cup and makes herself some toast. You kinda forgot about food while you were locked away in your room. Oh well. It's not like you need food. Well you do but it's not like dying of starvation because of self neglect is a heroic or just thing to do. So you don't need food.

You hate yourself for reminding yourself of god tiers. Fucking game. Fucking game constructs. You feel like crying again but you can't, not in front of Jade. Not ever.

“John are you ready to tell me what's wrong? Why do you keep closing the windows? You're not eating, don't think I haven't noticed.”

“I just don't like wind is all,” you say. “That's why I close the windows, anyway.”

“You don't like wind? Your aspect is breath!”

“Yeah.” You stare anywhere but her face, Again. As usual.

You can tell she's staring at you. You get up and walk back up to your room.

 

The game left a tumor in your head and you don't want it there.

You keep making mistakes. That little needy part of you that used to like the cutting is back.

You don't have any knives anyway. You weren't going to use knives. You used knives on the ship and you're fucking tired of using knives. You had used knives because they're cliché, probably, just like everything else you had liked back then.

You did however still have some of those giant hammers from the game in your closet. You pick up one of the less game powered ones. It's smaller. You don't want to actually kill yourself, not yet. Not that it would do much anyway. That might be why. You want to feel the pain, rather than just coming back.

You put your arm on the seat of a chair and hit it as hard as you can with the hammer. You feel your bones break. You drop the hammer on the floor. It's already starting to hurt. You want this, though. The pain distracts you. That's all it is. A distraction.

You don't expect to pass out.

 

Someone's holding you. A rough hand brushes your cheek. But its not Jade. Not Jade. Someone smaller.

You open your eyes and see sunglasses. Aviators, to be precise-- the kind you gave to Dave on his 13th birthday. You let out a huff of air.

“Back with the living, eh princess?” he says, his face absolutely straight. You look away from it. You can't look. You don't know why.

Your arm starts hurting again as you become fully conscious. You let out a groan but don't say anything, sitting up. You fix your glasses.

“What are you doing here, Dave.” you mutter.

“Rude much?” Dave asks. “Jade called me because she doesn't know much about dealing with injuries. She could _try_ to set the bone with her space powers but she thought it would be better if I did it. I'm assuming you don't want Jane over here with her healing shit. Or grandma.”

You shake your head. You feel a little sick but you did it for the pain, not so someone you hardly know could pop over and heal you.

“Hey.” Dave's got your face in his hands now. You're not sure what that's about. “John, why did you break your arm? It's not the best use of a hammer I ever heard of.”

You shrug and try to look away. That's probably why he has his hands on your face, you realize.

“John.”

You slump.

“I just. I don't want to think about the game. But I'm always thinking about the fucking game.” You're crying now. “Dave I don't want to think about it.”

“And so you broke your arm?”

“I thought it would distract me,” you whisper.

Dave just holds you.

 

“Why didn't you tell anyone? About how you felt about the game I mean. Like, we all hate the game. But. You know.”

Dave's putting your arm in a splint. Casts haven't been invented yet and it'll be easier to just kill you if something goes wrong with the healing, anyway.

“you all have so much… you all have it worse. You all have bigger problems. Dave you had bro to deal with! All I had to worry about was cake.”

“John you broke your arm with a hammer.”

“So??”

“I never broke my arm with a hammer. I never wanted to hurt myself that badly. You obviously have some problem I don't have, even if it's not… whatever you call my history. It's obviously bugging you more now then my past is bugging me now. Honestly John.”

You don't feel any better.

“Hey, John. What's the real reason you didn't talk to anyone. Was it some bullshit about feeling self centered? I bet it was. You were so fucking self centered man. It's even a little self centered not to talk to your friends for months, did you consider that?”

You feel a little cold.

“John.”

You refuse to look at him. “I… I never felt all that happy,” you say. “In the game. Before the game. But I knew people wanted me to be smiling. To pretend I didn't know. So I pretended. It's what seemed right at the time.”

“Are you always pretending?”

“I guess,” you stutter.

He's finished splinting your arm. “Maybe you should try to stop pretending.” He sits down next to you on the bed.

You don't reply. He puts an arm around you, so your head falls into his hair. It's soft.

“For me, John. For me, can you try to stop pretending?”

You try to stop crying.

“Okay.”


End file.
